KACE is the ACE
Kace is used as our public facing ticket system for technicians and users alike. We also leverage it for a knowledgebase. Additionally, it …
Overview
What is KACE Systems Management Appliance?
Quest now offers the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) as an IT Asset tracking and management appliance (also available as a virtual deployment if hardware requirements are met). Beyond discovery, inventory tracking and license management, KACE emphasizes automating software upgrade…
Recent Reviews
Popular Features
- Software and hardware inventory tracking (12)10.0100%
- Asset relationship management (8)10.0100%
- License management (11)9.090%
- Asset lifecycle monitoring (10)8.080%
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What is KACE Systems Management Appliance?
Quest now offers the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) as an IT Asset tracking and management appliance (also available as a virtual deployment if hardware requirements are met). Beyond discovery, inventory tracking and license management, KACE emphasizes automating software upgrade…
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Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is KACE Systems Management Appliance?
According to the vendor, KACE Systems Management Appliance is a robust and scalable IT systems management solution designed to automate and enhance various facets of IT operations. Its array of features includes asset management, server monitoring, software license management, patch administration, endpoint security, Chromebook and mobile device management capabilities, as well as providing a service desk. This product specifically caters to industries or professions that demand efficient system administration and secure network-connected devices.
Software Deployment
The product is designed to optimize the process of software distribution by providing tools for personalized installations and support for a wide variety of packages, including .MSI, .EXE, .ZIP, .pkg, .app, .dmg, .rpm, and more. Additionally, the KACE SMA enables the removal of unauthorized applications in order to establish a secure and compliant environment. The software deployment functionality also includes automated installation capabilities from the User Console, increasing convenience and usability. By leveraging these features, businesses can effectively manage software updates and ensure an updated IT infrastructure.
Remote Replication
The product is designed to address the network impact of large software distributions in organizations with multiple locations. It does so by designating a system at each remote location as a replication share, enabling streamlined application, patch, and script pulling through LAN rather than relying solely on the KACE SMA. This reduces costs and complexity associated with software distribution for such multi-site organizations. The setup and maintenance of the remote replication share are straightforward, offering a simplified solution for effective software distribution across various sites.
Comprehensive Reporting and Alerting Capabilities
The product is designed to enhance IT operational efficiency through various features. Users can schedule alerts and reports at preset frequencies, directing them to specific individuals or distribution lists, including end-users. Notable capabilities include wake-on-LAN functionality, power policy enforcement, and the ability to aggregate reporting across multiple environments for overall analysis. The KACE SMA serves as a centralized repository for device information, allowing organizations to convert data into actionable insights. Integration with Google Workspace Admin console ensures up-to-date data availability and effortless report generation. Additionally, software license management enables custom report creation and built-in compliance reports for effective software asset allocation and licensing proof. In summary, the KACE SMA provides comprehensive reporting and alerting capabilities to streamline processes and enable informed decision-making within businesses.
Server Monitoring
The claimed feature can be easily configured and seamlessly integrated with KACE SMA's service desk and KACE Go Mobile Application. It allows for the expansion of server monitoring to include requested applications. The appliance offers server management functionality, facilitating streamlined troubleshooting for helpdesk administrators and automating processes across various departments like IT, HR, Finance, etc. Additionally, it provides comprehensive hardware and software inventory for different systems while enabling network discovery and asset inventory using SNMP and other protocols. Emphasis is placed on actionable information about connected devices beyond computers such as networking gear, printers, and IP telephony. However, specific implementation details or user experiences are not provided in the available content.
Service Desk Integration
The product is designed to enhance efficiency in managing systems administration responsibilities through a user-friendly web interface that can be accessed from any internet-connected device. The interface incorporates intuitive tab- and menu-based navigation, complemented by various administrative functions such as LDAP and AD integration, role-based permissions, and detailed reporting. Moreover, the inclusion of an integrated user portal facilitates service ticket submission, status checking, access to a repository of common issues, and notifications regarding outages or other incidents. Additionally, seamless integration with Google APIs and Google Workspace Admin tools enables extraction of Chromebook data for management purposes within the KACE SMA platform. This consolidated view minimizes the need for multiple consoles or solutions during routine tasks.
KACE Systems Management Appliance Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Quest now offers the KACE Systems Management Appliance (SMA) as an IT Asset tracking and management appliance (also available as a virtual deployment if hardware requirements are met). Beyond discovery, inventory tracking and license management, KACE emphasizes automating software upgrade distribution with minimal end-user disruption, featuring remote replication for multi-site upgrades and rollouts. KACE SMA may be bundled with KACE Cloud Mobile Device Management (MDM) to form a complete UEM solution.
Reviewers rate Software and hardware inventory tracking and Asset relationship management highest, with a score of 10.
The most common users of KACE Systems Management Appliance are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Pros
- Cons
Helpdesk Portal and Automation Features: Several users have found the helpdesk portal and automation features in KACE to be helpful for creating helpdesk tickets from emails and streamlining their support processes.
Scripting Capabilities: Many reviewers have praised the scripting capabilities of KACE, stating that it makes it easy to patch, update, and deploy software to all their users. This functionality has saved them time and effort in managing their systems.
Inventory Control Feature: The inventory control feature in KACE has been highly appreciated by users for helping them identify systems with hardware or software issues. It provides detailed information about assets/devices, including software, programs, and processes, allowing for easy troubleshooting and maintenance.
Slow and Difficult to Customize Reports: Some users have found the software slow to respond and challenging to customize reports, which can hinder their productivity. They have also mentioned that seeking help from the Quest help desk may incur additional charges.
Limited Flexibility in Recurring Scheduling Options: Several reviewers have expressed dissatisfaction with the inflexibility of recurring scheduling options for certain types of jobs. This limitation can make it difficult for users to efficiently manage their tasks and schedule.
Lack of Intuitive User Interface: Users have reported that the software's interface is clunky and problematic to work with. They find the refresh rate slow and sluggish, which impacts their overall experience. Additionally, some users feel that the UI could be improved with modern design elements and different CSS color schemes to load quicker.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-12 of 12)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
December 28, 2023
KACE is the ACE
- Ticket System
- Knowledge Base
- Interface
- Features
- Layout of some options
- Support being able to handle some of the more extensive questions
- Getting ahold of support faster/easier (phone number?)
March 19, 2021
Good software for IT management team
- Easy to use ticketing system for IT department
- Good and easy interface to handle OS Updates and Managed softwares
- Easy to integrate with end points to reduce hurdles in terms while acquiring multiple devices
- Somehow we felt it is difficult to track the execution status of scheduled processes mainly when pushing OS updates.
- Our users complained about frequent logouts. We tried to change some settings but nothing worked for us.
September 26, 2020
Make your life easier with KACE
- Systems management
- Helpdesk ticket system
- Patching with Window's updates
- Window's updates could be a little bit clearer.
- Great for installing new official software but needs improvement for homegrown apps.
- Patching for some software such as Java.
September 15, 2020
If you want to ensure your computers are managed, KACE is a simple, no-frills solution that will do the job
- Patch management.
- Inventory management.
- Software pushes.
- Interface is not HTML5.
- Documentation isn't as clear and robust as many of the newer SaaS companies.
- Limitations on some hardware reporting.
September 19, 2019
KACE could do a little better
- KACE shows software, programs and processes of an asset/device.
- You are able to deploy updates to multiple assets.
- We've been having issues with devices not being inventoried in months, so the reporting/device info is not accurate.
- Some updates that are deployed may not get installed on all assets, may encounter issues.
August 04, 2019
KACE is great to manage all asset in your environment.
- The Agent push makes it quite effective in managing all assets on the network.
- Patching is less cumbersome than Wsus and SCCM.
- Ease of administering all PC assets.
- The ticketing system keeps tracks of all tickets and communication between users and engineers.
- The interface could use an update to look more modern and make sure it loads quicker.
- There's email flooding with creating and updating tickets, which is not necessary.
- More documentation would help with training.
April 24, 2019
KACE 1000 - The MSP's Lifesaver
- The KACE agent is incredibly easy to install and manage - it only requires an outbound port of TCP 443 from the customer, which is normally open, to allow function.
- You are able to push files to the agents via definable locations, or you can push and install files on a schedule or immediately.
- It has a separate scripting engine that allows you to write up scripts that perform logical tasks, such as ensuring a file is present before running a command, and remediation logic.
- Administrative interface can be slow at times, and does require some decent PC specifications to run adequately.
- The cost of the KACE solution can be very expensive depending on how many agents you plan to deploy
- There is a learning curve in order to master KACE's capabilities - however Quest does provide lots of resources to dig into. It is not as intuitive as it could be.
April 05, 2019
KACE is worth every penny
- Helpdesk portal and automate create helpdesk tickets from helpdesk emails
- Scripting made it easy to patch, update and deploy software to all our users
- Inventory control to identify systems with hardware or software issues
- Keep monitoring out of warranty systems
- Easy to identify the user hardware (it associate the user with the hardware using it)
- Easy to create process such as Change Management and Helpdesk
- Easy to modify and create helpdesk categories
- Quest Help desk is slow to respond
- Hard to customize the reports, you need to engage Quest help desk and it might be at a cost
February 22, 2019
Great System Management Platform for Small to Mid-size Organizations
- Inventory: KACE provides a ton of hardware and software inventory information that is easy to search, filter, and export. This is critical when we need to find the answers to questions about how many of such and such we have in our fleet.
- Patch Management: We were using WSUS before and it was altogether too cumbersome. KACE has given us the power, flexibility, and verification we need to feel comfortable our patches are up-to-date.
- Service Queue: We made KACE our help desk system and it does everything we need it to do. Great improvement over our old system.
- Some of the recurring scheduling options for certain types of jobs are not as flexible as we'd prefer. It is enough to get the job done, but further enhancements in this area would make our jobs even easier. This is mostly related to the scheduling of patching jobs.
- An even more powerful reporting/querying feature would be welcome. Again, what is there in KACE does the job, but it isn't as easy as we would prefer.
- The automatic patch management by the KACE SMA helps keep our Windows systems up to date.
- The ticketing system in the KACE SMA is very helpful for submitting tickets, tracking workloads, and keeping the clients up to date on progress.
- The software inventory feature in the KACE SMA is really helpful in tracking of software and insuring that we stay in compliance with software licensing.
- The KACE SMA needs a better way to handle different roles in the software so certain users can access or administrate certain parts of the software, but not the entire software installation.
- The KACE SMA could improve the ticketing process of projects. The aspects of the title and some information do not always flow down from the parent ticket to its child tickets.
- The KACE SMA could improve the UI of the software with the addition of different CSS color schemes.
April 30, 2018
KACE Managment System, Helpdesk
- Helpdesk ticketing, the software allows not only the building of a portal that the users can log into to submit the tickets, but it also allows them to generate a ticket via email, which is a huge successful implementation that we have had.
- Live inventory tracking. With an agent installed on a PC, as long as we maintain the data, it can report back information that is crucial to the machine.
- Web portal makes for easy maintenance and implementation of the software and updates.
- Prior to Quest, we had issues with Dell support on the product. Since the buyout, it has been better to deal with support on issues.
- Sometimes there are issues with the software itself. We have to resync some items sometimes to get things to work. For example, the helpdesk system stopped generating email created tickets, we re-entered the password in the KACE system and saved the settings and it fixed the issue. The password had not changed at all, so it doesn't really make sense as to why that happened, but there have been other things similar to the issue I just listed.
March 01, 2018
KACE tools - decent product with room for improvement.
- Runs quietly - it does not eat up a massive amount of system resources and is silent - users seldom know it is there.
- Tracking ticketing problems.
- Pushing updates.
- The interface... it is very clunky and can be problematic to work with. Refresh is slow - it is sluggish.
- Too many email updates to ticket resources though, to be honest, this could be an adjustable control feature that I am not aware of. (I use Kace, I do not administrate it.)